Friendly dog, antique Chevy trucks and Sasquatch part of farm ambiance

Photos by Tom Rivers

ALBION – Valerie Collins, an artist from Clarendon, is shown with a picture of a Sasquatch in an apple orchard. Collins has this painting and two others on display through November at Hoag Library in Albion.

She created three paintings at local farms and wanted to highlight an unusual feature that the farms use to connect with the public.

At Robert Farms Market in Medina, the family has two very big Sasquatch statues at the market, 11170 Maple Ridge Rd. The Roberts family has a sense of humor. They also make their own apple cider and sell 20 varieties of apples, other produce and flowers from their garden center.

Valerie Collins on Wednesday hangs a painting of a 1950s Chevy truck at Panek Farms on West County House Road in Albion. The Panek family has several classic trucks and vehicles on display at site, where they sell pumpkins, strawberries, Christmas trees and other products.

The old trucks are in great shape and featured in the Albion Strawberry Festival parade each June.

Lenny, a German Shepherd, is a fixture at the Gardens of Colehill in Holley. Alana and Chad Fabry welcome families to the farm for blueberry picking. They strive to not use any pesticides at the farm, where they also produce honey and garlic. The farm is located at 3569 North Main Street Rd.

Collins received a state grant administered through the Genesee-Orleans Regional Arts Council for the project, which she calls, “Keepers of the Land.” She wanted to highlight family farms that she said are the backbone of the community.

“This is one of the nice things about Orleans County,” she said about the agricultural landscape. “We’re still rural and we have family farms.”

She worries about the loss of farmland to solar facilities and the potential impact of data centers on agriculture.

She will have a reception at the library from 5 to 6:30 p.m. on Monday if people want to meet her and hear more about the oil paintings, which are 16 by 20 inches.

Collins retired in April as the coordinator of the Ogden Senior Center in Spencerport. That has given her more time for her paintings and artwork.

She also has paintings featured in upcoming art shows at the Gillam Grant Community Center in Bergen and Eli Fish in Batavia.

Collins said she enjoys unwinding in the evening by working on her paintings.

“There is a drive to make it look like what’s inside my head,” she said. “It’s like magic.”

Collins said she would like to do more paintings of farms in Orleans County, focusing on ones in the northern part of Orleans.

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Photos by Tom Rivers

ALBION – Bill Lattin is like clockwork with a weekly duty: watering the plants at Hoag Library and winding an antique clock.

Lattin took on the tasks when Hoag Library opened in July 2012. The clock and most of the plants were moved from the former Swan Library, which had been Albion’s public library from 1900 to mid-2012.

Most of the furnishings at Hoag Library were brand new. But some old bookshelves and the clock made the trip a few blocks south to the new library on Main Street.

Lattin estimates the clock is from the late 1880s to early 1890s. It’s not a grandfather clock and it doesn’t chime or have bells. The Swan Library staff wanted a quiet clock. He thinks the clock was on the wall when Swan first opened. He has seen in some old photos of the library’s earliest days.

He climbs on a small ladder every Wednesday afternoon and winds the clock, but not too tight or it won’t keep time perfectly. Wind it too much and it could be off a few minutes when he’s back the following week.

Lattin had some added work today because the clock needed to be set back an hour. He was a few days after the fact with clocks falling back an hour at 2 a.m. on Sunday.

After winding the clock, Lattin fills a container with water. He gets the big plants upstairs first then checks the ones in the lounge area by the magazines.

He is steady every week in what he calls “wind and water” day.

“It gives it consistency,” he said.

He knows how the clock can be delicate duty and he thinks the plants respond better to watering the same time, every week. He tries not to saturate the soil with too much water. He feels the dirt first to get a sense of how much water the plants need.

Lattin, who is retired as the county historian and Cobblestone Museum director, has quietly gone about the tasks at the library without much notice. But I saw him today and was impressed by how committed he has been to this unglamorous chore.

Bill latin checks the soil to get a feel for how much water to give the plant at Hoag Library.